Kamala Harris Swells ‘Gun Violence’ Deaths by 66 Percent

Democrat presidential hopeful Kamala Harris posted on Twitter that guns are responsible for 100 deaths a day in America and suggests that “gun violence is a national epidemic.”

What she did not say is that 66 percent of the firearm-related deaths that occur daily in this country are due to suicides, not “gun violence.”

Moreover, she did not mention that the number of 100 gun deaths a day comes from 2017 figures, which are an anomaly of high gun-related deaths for a given year.

Harris tweeted:

Two things need to be noted: First, this is a method Hillary Clinton used in 2016. On April 11, 2016, Breitbart News reported that Clinton swelled “gun violence” deaths by 66 percent during comments at the Gun Violence Prevention Discussion. Clinton said that “90 people a day die from gun violence,” then added, “That is 33,000 people a year.” In reality, roughly 11,000-11,500 people die from “gun violence” in a given year in America. The other 20,000-22,000 gun-related deaths are suicides (along with the 500 annual accidental gun deaths). But Clinton lumped it all together as deaths from “gun violence,” and now, Harris combines it all with her claim that “gun violence is a national epidemic.”

Second, gun-related deaths in 2017 did spike, but Chicago Tribune editorial board member Steve Chapman noted that gun control would not change that. And that is because the causal factor in the rise of 2017 deaths was not “gun violence,” but suicides. Yet Chapman noted that the rate of non-firearm-related suicides outpaced the rate of firearm-related suicides, even in 2017.

He also noted that Japan, which has some of the most stringent gun controls in the world, has a far higher suicide rate than the United States. People in Japan simply kill themselves in other ways and do so more frequently.

Gun control is not the answer.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.